Dalmatians, Croatians, Bosnians, Servians, and Bulgarians are of this stock. The eastern half of Europe is peopled by them, and were they united, they could subjugate the whole continent. No other European race is one half as numerous; no one excels them in bravery, patience, and fortitude, though they are deficient in enterprise and the power of combination. Numerous instances go to show that their intellect is susceptible of a high degree of cultivation; though they have been for so many centuries in a servile and depressed condition that their name, Slave, has become the general denomination of those in servitude. The scheme of uniting them into one empire is, of course, propounded in the interest of Russia, which country would be the head of this grand confederacy. M. Kollar is Russian in his politics, though not, we believe, a Russian by birth; and this fact has probably caused his project to be received with less favor than it seemed to deserve in Poland, Austria, and European Turkey, though he has developed it with singular learning, ingenuity, and eloquence. The recent war in Hungary has done more than any event in the history of Europe during the present century to make the realization of his scheme appear possible, and even probable. For the first time, the Russians have come into action as the allies of the Sclavonic races south of the Danube, to assist them in crushing the insolent dominion of a race of intruders who have ruled them with a rod of iron while vindicating their own freedom and independence against the pretensions of the house of Austria.

The quarrel between the Magyars and the Croatians has brought out in strong relief the characteristics of the two races. Brave, high-spirited, and imperious, the former treated the complaints of their ancient subjects, as they consider them, with scorn, and heaped new provocations on them just at the moment when they were bringing upon themselves a desperate conflict with Austria. More patient and politic, the Croatians took measures to secure the aid both of the emperor and of the Russians before they threw defiance in the teeth of the Magyars. Kollar, Gaj, and Jellachich had skilfully excited their national feelings, and they acted together with great firmness and unanimity. They exposed very fully the inconsistency of the Magyars, who thought it natural and right to enfranchise themselves from all foreign dominion, and to

reconquer their individuality as a nation and a race; but who were astonished and indignant, that the Illyrians and the Wallachians living within the borders of Hungary should experience the same desire and cherish the same hopes. The Croatians held high and menacing language to compel the emperor to espouse their quarrel. In a memorial addressed to him before hostilities had broken out they exclaimed, "Emperor, if you reject our prayers, we shall know how to vindicate our liberty without you; and we prefer to die heroically, like a Sclavonian people, rather than to bear any longer such a yoke as is imposed upon us by an Asiatic horde, from whom we have nothing good to receive or to learn. Emperor, know that we prefer, if we must choose between them, the knout of the Russians to the insolence of the Magyars. We will not, on any terms, belong to the Magyars. Remember that, if Croatia forms but a thirty-fifth part of your empire, the Croatians constitute a third of your whole infantry."

As a farther illustration of the spirit of the people at this time, we give a translation of a Sclavonian song, written by one of their patriots, which obtained great popularity throughout the Illyrian provinces.

"Whoever is a Sclavonian and a hero, let him wave his banner in the air; let him gird on his sabre, and mount his fiery steed. Forward, brothers! God is with us, and the devils are our enemies.

"See how the black and savage Tartar is treading our nation and our language under foot. Let us resist before he prostrates us. Forward, brothers! God is with us, and the devils are our enemies.

"Let the brave Sclavonian of the North and the Illyrian of the South join hands at this festival. Behold already the gleam of their lances, hear the sound of the trumpets and the thunder of the cannon. Forward, brothers! God is with us, and the devils are our enemies.

"The time is come to wash ourselves in the blood of our enemies. Let each one, then, strike down a head. Forward, brothers! God is with us, and the devils are our enemies."

The Sclavonians were not the only enemies within the bosom of their country whom the Magyars provoked. The Germans, who had founded cities in the interior, establishing

themselves as commercial and manufacturing colonists in the midst of this rude and warlike agricultural population, were made to feel their isolated position, and the arrogance of the aristocratic masters of the soil around them. The lines of separation between the heterogeneous races were preserved with Jewish scrupulousness; each has retained its language, features, dress, and occupation unchanged for centuries. The situation of the Germans is most peculiar in the extreme eastern and southeastern provinces, in Transylvania and the Banat. Here they are surrounded by the rude and fierce Szeklers, a race who are born soldiers, allied in blood and language to the Magyars, whom they preceded a century or two in the occupation of the country. Their banner is indicative of their character; it bears a heart pierced through and through with a sword. Amid this half-barbarous people, in a rugged and mountainous country at the extreme limit of European civilization towards the east, a colony from the heart of Germany was established in the course of the twelfth century; and in spite of the disadvantages of their situation, they have increased in numbers and wealth. Their blood is still as pure as when they first left the fatherland; their fresh and smiling German faces, their fair hair and light complexion, indicate their origin as clearly, as do their prudent and econom-. ical habits, and their dogged industry. These grave and honest burghers are republicans by descent and in predilection; they reject all aristocracy, and choose their magistrates by universal suffrage. In many respects, they remind one of the flourishing commercial towns of the Middle Ages; like them, they are guarded with high walls and strong fortifications against the semi-barbarous people without, who are all warriors, and who are organized like a camp on the frontiers. If need be, these flourishing citizens will fight stoutly in defence of the walls which guard their shops and their homes.

The Magyars, the Szeklers, and the Germans formed a treaty at Torda in the fifteenth century, to divide Transylvania between them, the two former to do all the fighting, and the latter to keep the cities and strongholds. They are the three sovereign nations, as they call themselves, though they number all together less than a million; while the subject nations, most of whom are Wallachians, amount to a million and a half. These had no part in the union of Torda,

which united the other three races, and therefore are allowed no political or civil rights. They cannot elect their magistrates, nor fill public offices; they are serfs, and cultivate the fields of their masters. The Magyars, though so few in number, helped themselves to three fourths of the soil of Transylvania; the north and the west, including Carlsbourg, the capital, are theirs. The Germans, or Saxons as they are here called, hold the flourishing cities of Cronstadt and Hermanstadt, with the rich territory in the south, and the district. of Bistritz in the north. Their towns were originally fortified not more against the Turks than against the Magyars; and they have just had renewed occasion to use them against these foes, whose desperate valor, however, was not repelled by them. Naturally attached to Germany and to republican institutions, they saw with dismay, after the grand democratic outbreak of 1848, that the Magyars were separating all Hungary from Austria, with a view of preserving their own aristocratic institutions, and lording it more imperiously than ever over the other races that inhabited the land. They immediately sent a delegate to the federative Congress at Frankfort to ask for aid and protection; but the theorists in this distracted assembly had neither troops nor money to send them, and they were left to their fate, to the arrogance of the Magyars whom they had offended by this step, and to the ruthless hostility of the Szeklers. The following is an extract from the address sent by the municipality of Hermanstadt, on the 9th of June, 1848, through their delegate to the Frankfort Assembly.

"German brothers, seven centuries ago, a branch of the national tree, the gigantic oak of Germany, was planted in the oriental valleys of the Carpathian mountains; its extended roots have penetrated to the soil of the fatherland, and continually drawn nourishment from it. The air and the light of Germany have continued to warm and to cheer us. In the midst of the aristocratic and feudal institutions of the other races which threaten to stifle our civilization, we have remained German citizens. Yes, brothers; in spite of the local separation, we have preserved with old German fidelity the manners and the language of our common ancestors. At the moment when the European edifice is everywhere crumbling into ruin, the legislator, like Archimedes, needs a fixed point on which to rest and sustain the world. This point has been found. Let the German fatherland extend to

every region where the German language is spoken. With our whole hearts we will join you in causing our national airs to resound from the banks of the Vistula to those of the Rhine. The children have not forgotten their mother, the mother has not forgotten her children. Generous voices have spoken in the imperial city, in this very assembly, in favor of maintaining the rights of Transylvanian Germany; we wish, indeed, that our great and powerful fatherland had used a bolder tone, and not restricted itself to entreating the little nation of the Magyars, but had ordered it to respect the German nationality."

In this general turmoil, the Wallachians, also, were moved to demand a restoration of those rights, the common rights of humanity, of which they had been deprived for centuries. Some of the younger members of the Greek clergy inspired them with a generous ambition, and taught them to shake impatiently the yoke of subjection and helotism which had so long weighed upon their necks. The example of their brethren across the frontier, also, in the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, who had recently driven off some of their petty local tyrants, had given them new ideas of freedom and new hopes of ameliorating their situation by their own efforts. In the last Diet which was held in Transylvania before the revolution of 1848, the Wallachians had uttered their complaints, and asked at least a hearing for their cause. It was sternly and stubbornly refused; the three sovereign nations agreed with each other on this point, if on no other, that the subject race, which outnumbered them all three together, should not be admitted to an equality of rights with themselves. The Saxon burghers in this respect showed no more liberality than the Magyar magnates or the Szekler nobles; they would not violate the ancient constitution of the duchy. The Austrian ministry hoped nothing from the efforts of the Wallachians, and therefore did not befriend them. The suppliants were rejected on all sides. Then the revolution broke out, and they offered to serve in the ranks of the Magyars if these would proclaim their emancipation. The offer was contemptuously refused; and in their despair, the Wallachians joined that party, the weakest one, whose professions seemed most liberal, though their conduct belied their words. They made common cause with the republican Germans, and contributed not a little to distract the attention and divide the forces of the Magyar insurgents.